confusing death...kinda long

[chizzle]

We recently purchased a female blue throat trigger from a LFS. When we purchased her, she had some white cloudiness? (I guess is the best way to describe it) on her dorsal fin. I checked w/ the LFS and they had had her in the store for about three months. I watched her eat & swim & everything appeared fine. We acclimated her for two hours when we got home & then released into the main tank.

She locked herself into some rocks & then we later realized she was stuck. We rearranged the rocks & within the hour she was out swimming around the tank w/ no problems. She ate like a pig that night.

The following day, everything was fine also. On the third day she began hiding and was not coming out at all. She wasn't showing any other symptoms, no trouble breathing, swimming issues, no spots/lesions, only the slight cloudiness on her dorsal fin.

When I checked on the tank this morning, she was still alive. She was still in her hiding spot but she had changed position, her eyes were moving & I could still see she was breathing. When I got home from work I could tell she was dead. Assuming it happened right after I left for work she was in the tank, dead for about 10 hours...

When we pulled her out, she was completely horizontal on her side. I'm not sure whether or not it was the side she was laying on but on one the sides of her body the area around her mouth was completely white. It extended out in a circle about 1/2 inch. There was also an area similar to that near her tail on the opposite side. It almost appeared that she was bleached in spots? Hope that doesn't sound too off the wall...

I'm just a little confused by the whole thing & I'm hoping its not one of those that goes unsolved. It just happened so fast. We tested water parameters tonight & everything is at 0. pH is alittle low at 7.8, but we are doing a water change tomorrow. Other tank mates are a scopas tang & a maroon clown. There was never any aggression between the fish, and the two fish in the tank are doing fine - showing no symptoms of anything.

Any help would be appreciated & sorry for the long post :)

[Freed]

Sounds like it would be marine velvet or oodinium(sp?). I don't know much about those but it is possible that the others could get it too. QT prior to introducing into main tank is a must and may have saved this girl had she been observed and treated in a QT tank before putting into main tank. QT will also prevent diseases from spreading in main tank to other fish, etc. I hope someone can chime in that knows more about the disease you described.

[chizzle]

I did some research on marine velvet & I don't think that was it. I'll see if I can google it.

We normally do QT, but we were cleaning the tank & stupidly made a spur of the moment buy. We've been looking for a female BTT for about six months, so we had a lapse in judgment when we stumbled across her. Needless to say, QT is back up & running & we were planning on moving her into the QT tonight for different treatments. Needless to say, that will never happen again.

Thanks for the suggestion, and any other ideas are appreciated.

[happyface888]

Got any pics?

[willhoward]

Yeah I don't think it is Velvet / Oodinium either. Classical symptoms would be:
~ fish loses appetite (not the case here)
~ fish develops a whitish film over entire body as it tries to fight of the parasite (chizzle mentioned some white areas)
~ there will be mucus secreted around the gills (I don't know if there was)
~ in the final stage the fish will have little white cysts, like white spot and usualy when this stage is reached, the fish will die in the next couple of days if not treated.

There are some correlations, but one of the crystal clear symptom of Vervel/Oodinium is that the fish will stop eating because of the parasites and infection in his gills, which was not the case here. {it may however be that trigger just don't know when to eat :) }

Golden rule: never, and I mean never buy a fish with some sort of illness, disability or misbehaviour :(

[chizzle]

The only pic that we have isn't a good one. It was when she was out swimming & you can't see the cloudiness on her fins because, well, she was swimming :)

I don't think it was oodinium either. I think this may be one of those things that goes unsolved...

And things I've learned from this -
1. always qt.
2. no spur of the moment buys
3. dont listen to the LFS
4. if something doesn't look right - dont buy.
I think that wraps it up. Any other lessons here?

Thanks for all of the help, I really do appreciate it.